Tag Archives: microfiction

In the wild apple grove in the woods, Sam sometimes saw the young man. It started when Sam was fourteen and just realizing he was gay, and had continued every autumn for the ten years since. The stranger’s sly face peeked down at him between sun-dappled branches, or his tattered brown jacket and bare feet flashed by as he darted behind trunks. The man had always looked to be in his twenties, never changing in all the years. He only ever showed when Sam came alone, never when Sam’s sister or father were along.

She runs through the woods as her mother’s warning echoes through her mind. Trees bolt past her on the worn stone path, cloak enshrouding her. The dark woods close about her. Soon the stones end and the path becomes dirt. Her journey would take twenty minutes, thirty if she walked. She runs.

Humanity came, with fire and axes, smoke-belching machines ever larger, and chemicals increasingly caustic, but the dryads survived. The great forests were felled, the fae retreated, and many gods died, but the dryads remained. They learned new words for fear—clearcut, feller-buncher, defoliant—but they never faltered.

The wind rattled the windows and howled through the miniscule gaps where the glass didn’t quite meet the frames. I unfurled my legs and moved to the window. The rain was heavy, it fell straight down and crashed against the pavement. The rolling, dark clouds obscured the stars and there was a distant flash of lightning and a growl of thunder. I let the curtains fall back into place, obscuring my view of the ominous night sky and went back to unpacking boxes.

“This is definitely not the place.” I flashed my car’s high-beams on the dark cabin.

“Obviously,” Amy said, sitting next to me. I glanced over at her, making sure my eyes didn’t linger too long. Dressed with cardboard wings, horns, and only enough to cover her naughty bits, she looked hot.

*editor’s note: This is a prequel to last year’s story, Annual Spirits, also by TammyJo Eckhart.

“In Remembrance of Me”
by TammyJo Eckhart

I found Doreen’s plans for our first wedding anniversary two months ago. She’d laid out everything hour by hour. She was always so organized. Yet somehow she forgot the roast and had to run out to get it. My hands started fisting at some point when I read over the list and diagrams until I heard her voice say, “Nicholas Gerard Denison, don’t you dare spoil a perfectly usable piece of paper.”

Electrical and torrential: that is the storm I find myself out in. Rain lashes the blacktop, and icy blue fire veins the night sky. Water and electricity, primal elements of the gods. I’ve been praying to them, or to something, some prehistorical entities. The eternal hurt has brought me out here tonight, along this particular stretch of roadway. Because I miss Jeremy. Ten years on, the bitter yearning persists.